With a merger that gives it an edge and a clutch of cool new clients, including an iconic British brand, this growing agency is knocking on the doors of its bigger rivals.
It’s been two years since I sat on a noisy café terrace in Cannes with Jamie Elliott, the upbeat CEO of The Gate. High time for a catch-up, this time in the comparative hush of the Martinez, with not a road drill in earshot and smoother service to match.
So what’s new at The Gate, a compact but ambitious UK agency that’s part of the MSQ network? Jamie takes a breath and dives in.
“We’ve won significant domestic and global accounts, proving that a smallish agency – although less small than we were two years ago – can handle international work. MSQ is gathering force and pace, with new investment last year from a private equity firm, One Equity Partners, and I feel The Gate is really driving the creative ambition of the group.”
Perhaps the most high-profile new win is The AA. Not Alcoholics Anonymous, for our American readers, but the former Automobile Association, providing services for motorists like car insurance, breakdown assistance and route planners. When I was a kid, I’d open the glovebox of my dad’s car and half a dozen AA road maps would spring out.
The Gate’s campaign, “It’s OK, I’m with The AA”, has the twin advantages of being delightful and including the brand name in the slogan, which so many fail to do.
No weak links
Another recent win is the accessible mobile operator SMARTY – and here the agency did it again, with the slogan “Less malarkey, more SMARTY”.
Jamie also reveals that since our last meeting The Gate has grown from roughly thirty people to around 100. It did so largely by assimilating MBAStack, a “customer experience marketing” agency that combines data-driven customer relationship management with creativity and tech. It’s now fully part of The Gate.
“It’s become clear over the last couple of years that progressive marketers want to bring together the brand and the customer experience,” says Jamie. “That’s the creative and strategic opportunity: to make sure those things are powerfully linked.”
It sounds obvious when expressed like that, but the fact is that the people building a brand and those handling its different touchpoints with customers, not to mention loyalty and retention, often work at different agencies. The purpose of the merger is to enable The Gate’s clients to have the strongest possible brands, with no weak links because the brand and the customer experience are in lockstep, with impactful communication throughout.
“Fusing those things is where the scale and the creative opportunities are going to be. It’s the way the market is moving we feel we’re ahead of the curve with our offering.”
It’s also a way of cutting down complexity for the client, he adds. “If you’re a client, you want to be able to call one person who’s heading a team that offers all the services you need. Right now, I would not want to be an independent creative agency outside a group. Being isolated like that is a dangerous place to be.”
Progressive marketers want to bring together the brand and the customer experience
The culture imperative
When you go through a merger it’s important to retain a strong culture, and The Gate is sticking firmly by its snappy mantra: “If you can find The Gate, you can walk through walls.” This is backed up by what it calls its three “gang laws”:
- Everyone sweeps the floor: no ego, no problem.
- Scare yourself: if an idea isn’t scary at first, there’s no hope for it.
- Nobody is normal: we celebrate our differences.
“Part of my job as a CEO is to ensure we have a perfect merger. A lot has been written about that, but it boils down to building one solid culture, and allowing people to be part of that process. The gang laws capture the spirit of the culture we want to have.”
The “nobody is normal” rule refers to an ad that was something of a gamechanger for The Gate at Cannes two years ago, where it won five Lions including an animation Gold. For the UK charity Childline, it defused the pain of feeling “different” by suggesting, in Jamie’s words, “that there’s no benchmark for normality – you’re as weird as everyone else is, and that’s a wonderful thing.”
Clients also gravitate toward the gang laws, he says. “Entrusting their brand to The Gate effectively means signing up to the laws, because it’s the key to a successful partnership. They’re saying, ‘If you’re about work that’s bold and has that slight sense of discomfort about it – because if not, it’s just schlock – then we’ve got to be prepared to get behind that.’ It’s a shared agenda.”
It's a challenge for any agency: how do you get the client to go with the scary idea? In part it’s about how you pick your clients, says Jamie. After the Childline breakthrough, The Gate was on a lot of brands’ radar. But rather than saying “yes” to everyone, it carefully selected clients who wanted to embark on a genuine partnership with the shared goal of creating bold work. “If you have that conversation at the beginning, you can go back to it if things start to go slightly off the rails. And by the way, we expect our clients to hold us to it too.”
Bold can also mean flamboyant. As we’re in vacation season, let’s close with a look at yet another recent client win, online fashion retailer Very. The campaign is colourful…very.